Abstract

As a poet, Charles Baudelaire influenced the post-Romantic French tradition with his chef d'oeuvre, Les Fleurs du mal. Les Fleurs serves as a defined "mirror image" of Baudelaire's life, complete with his debauchery, wine, opium, and, sometimes more exaggerated, his perversity. Baudelaire is a poet of human consciousness, for Les Fleurs portrays Man's life in its entirety, paying particular attention to the individual who cultivates consciousness, art, and the life of the mind. To achieve this, Baudelaire uses symbolism to stress that the dandy and the decadent both consider Man to be a reservoir of endless possibility. Symbolism allows the poet to show that the world of the senses leads into the inner world of the poet. Therefore, Les Fleurs examines Man's soul-state, particularly His raison d'être. Baudelaire purposefully makes the speaker in Les Fleurs lifelike, for he is an informed observer of life, in refuge from a social structure designed to sacrifice human progress. This influences the gist of Baudelaire's argument: what one accomplishes in life is not as important as realizing the meaning behind the journey of life.